Shane was beautiful. Her hair was long and black with perfectly tanned skin that flowed along with her perfectly shaped face.

Her body was leaned and muscular.

But she hid a terrible secret, a secret that forbade her from looking into any mirror.

She pulled on her jeans, jumping a few times to squeeze into them. The boards in the bedroom squeaked in response. She huffed and bent down to pick her shirt up: a floral crop top that she assumed hugged her shape nicely. Shane couldn’t tell if it actually looked good on her. She looked at the mirror she covered with a blanket all those years ago.

She remembered the first time she got startled by her own reflection. Her school was having an ice-cream day. She was told that she had to bring a dollar in for a cone. When she came in the next day with no money, she took a dollar from the biggest boy in her class. Shane remembered thinking that he didn’t need another ice-cream — that she was doing him a favor — even as he cried on the play set and watched everyone else eat theirs.

After that day she had seen a mark appear on her face. Deep and haggard. Disgusting. When she saw it, she ran to show her mother but her mother saw nothing.

And now she stared at the covered mirror, a corner of the blanket coming off. She gasped and ran to fix it. When she reached for it, the entire blanket ripped off and slipped to the floor.

She stared at herself, shocked at what the reflection had become.

An inhumane woman glared at her. The eyes were wild with glints of fire, the arms and legs were chipped and bleeding, her face was merely made of skinless muscle. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She couldn’t believe this is what she had become.

As she got older, the marks got uglier and deeper.

In her own eyes she saw an ugly beast. One that she knew others couldn’t see it.

She would smile and pretend that the wild beast was tame.

But whenever Shane felt moody or angry, she would let the beast run free and those around her would finally glimpse who she truly was: a monster.